Category Archives: nature

The Creative Epiphany – Soul Food

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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This mixed media collage is titled SOUL FOOD – I did it several years ago and it is now owned by one of my favorite people. It is a large painting, it makes a strong statement,  and requires a dedication of space, much like the various things that feed my soul. If you examine it closely it reveals details about the passions in my life. I could not get them ALL worked into the composition of course but there is a selection of clues. Sort of like Cliff Notes. But my life is an open book…always has been. If you ask me a question I answer it honestly – if  you know me it does not take long to figure out what makes me tick. I reveal a lot in my art and my writing, and of course those “life journals” are pretty much out there all over the damn place so it is already too late for me to be mysterious even if I claimed I wanted to be. I am a communicator. It runs in my family – the genes from my straight-up-tight English Lit and correct grammar teacher mother combined with my artistic, musical, eccentric risk-taking furniture salesman father gave me no choice in life, really. My dad could tell a story – always a true one – and it would be hilarious. He was charismatic, handsome, romantic and a naughty boy to the very end. So the fact that I seem to be drawn to that very  type of guy is no big surprise.

But I digress – soul food is what is on my mind today. Cravings – soul food places and faces and things that feed me and fill me up, leaving me satisfied and content. I hope you all know what your soul food is, because when you need symbolic comfort food and you need it NOW then you probably know just what to do with yourself. I guess my equivalent of the old tried and true comfort soul food mac & cheese has got to be the BIG SUR COASTLINE of California. When I move back to Denver this summer I just don’t know what I will do without it. There is a very special place to stay as you travel south on highway 1 – it is a charming cluster of motel cottages perched along the edge of the sand dunes  on a desolate stretch of beach overlooking my Specific Ocean, as I call it – it is going to beckon you again and again once you go there. The place is THE SANCTUARY, just a bit north of Monterey and Carmel. Visit the website at   www.thesanctuarybeachresort.com

Oh and by the way, as you begin your drive down the coast, in the town of Pacifica just south of SF (that place that is always on the news because it is losing chunks of real estate into the sea)  be sure to stop for BBQ at The Gorilla BBQ place, 2145 Coast Highway 1, Pacifica – located in an orange railroad car on the left if you are headed south – the best BBQ I have EVER had. They do have mac & cheese.   www.gorillabbq.com   They even have their own theme song available on the website.

Another must-visit place, farther down the coast past Carmel by almost 2 hours is Nepenthe – you can Google or Bing it and read to your heart’s content – I cannot possibly do it justice with my mere words, but I will say that the word Nepenthe means to alleviate pain or sorrow….to cause to forget trouble….and it does live up to it’s press. The views are beyond belief, and on my last visit there for the occasion of my late husband’s memorial day spent along Big Sur with dear friends, my pain lifted and I felt lighter than air when we settled in there for a very long dinner on the terrace. Go there to feed your soul. Go.

There are many areas here in northern CA that I consider my soul food places. In the 7 years I have lived here I have soaked up a lot of rare and wonderful memories. Yosemite leaves me breathless, Tahoe of course is my family’s playground just an hour and a half from my front door. Wine Country – Oh my goodness. My favorite art supply store of all time is FLAX in San Francisco – it is like a candy store for me. The exotic collage papers imported from all corners of the world are my magnet, pulling me in and holding me hostage there for hours. That store is responsible for changing my artistic life and direction. And it is so much more than papers – it is a great place for kids and for wrappings,  ribbons and albums, books, journals, paint of course and canvas and every single thing you can think of in art.  www.flaxart.com

This blog entry will be continued – so much to say and so little space. Emotional Soul Food is a concept that I highly recommend you explore – if you find a safe and comforting place to go, a particularly wonderful person to visit, something satisfying to eat, a lovely location to sit for awhile or a midnight walk along the beach – if you know how to employ your special people, places and things for your own peace and comfort – well then you are taking care of yourself well. And I believe in taking care of yourself. There are few people who will do as good a job of that as you do, and it is indeed a full time job.

 

 

The Creative Epiphany – Gone

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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I am gone – I left the island in the dead of night with a stiff breeze behind me, embarrassed almost to be leaving because who in their right mind would leave, and flew back to northern Cal. I didn’t really want to leave and my dread of the long night ahead of me on the plane was punctuated when the person next to me spilled a full glass of tomato juice all over my carry-on.  I took it as an omen that I was going to hate the trip home. I really didn’t want to leave, or did I already say that. The island life is alluring, delicious, sensual, colorful and it grows on you. You roll around in the ambience, like a dog on a good smell, wanting to get it permanently into your pores. It is sensory overload 24/7. I wanted to really be there – not just visiting. I met a lot of new people who I already believe will be friends, I painted, I wrote and I thought a lot. We took day trips, we went to street fairs and markets, we visited art galleries and many beaches.  I took about 7 million pictures and told myself I was absolutely allowed to stand there on my beach of choice for over an hour if I wanted to, attempting to capture the perfect wave in one magnificent photo.

But now, as the James Taylor song says, “Say nice things about me – cuz I’m gone.”

The seduction of color hits you at every turn in Hawaii. Those of us who are hooked on it, who must have our daily fix, who lap it up and eat it whole with juice dripping down our cheeks as we photograph it, who live and breathe it and cannot possibly get enough of our junkie habit, our COLOR drug of choice, well we are happy as hell on the islands.

The paintings I finished over there in lala land were like alien creations – colorful, wild and a little bit too free even for me. Like craft day in the loony bin. Kind of mindless and silly with metaphorical smiles. Abstract to be sure, and I know it was my hand that painted them because I watched it happen, but somewhere along the way they went all goofy and the color became almost the only thing. It was fun while it lasted, however. I worked fast while held in the zany clutches of some island gremlin and lost my common sense as I flung the paint around. I guess that would be called painting with abandon. A good thing, really, to be able to unleash that inner 3 year old and give her an afternoon purely for her enjoyment. She got her wiggles out.

But she grew up fast on the ride home when that tomato juice hit the fan. It seemed symbolically rude. Like a smack in the face that said, “Ha Ha, nanny nanny foo foo – you have to go home now.”

And so I did – I took my toys and went home.

Wow is it drab here at home in the middle of February. When I returned from the island, the barefoot confetti life gave way to the black frost bitten gerbera daisies in the pots around the patio. Spring is still a way off here.

But I have pictures to prove the validity of paradise and what it does to you. Wanna see some?

And don’t you know when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around.  55 degrees seems like freezing as I leave baggage claim and load my stuff into a friend’s car for the drive back to Lincoln.

Was that place a dream?

The Creatve Epiphany – Making Waves

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

So many waves, so little time. Waves of joy, waves of happiness, waves of nostalgia – we can hear the surf pounding as we lay in bed at night. Reports of high waves and strong surf over on the Hilo side. Here along the Kona coast the sand at Magic Sands resort beach just down the road was eroded away with big wave action a couple weeks ago leaving the magic to stand on its own but now the sand is already coming back. It has to come back – for eons of time it has weathered enormous surf and it is still there. It figures out how to come back.

Humpback whales migrating parallel to the waves with their babies on their way to some far off destination where plentiful food and safety for their young can be found. Traveling close to the coast to avoid ships and sharks, stopping in this cove or that to allow play time in warm waters. The whale watching boats are busy – I have a thing about chasing whales. Not a yearning to do it but a yearning to just leave them alone. We see whales from this lanai, not up close and personal but we do see them. You hear stories about crowds of people squealing with glee at seeing a whale up so close you can look him in the eye, and yet I prefer not to participate in that group grope. It offends my sensibilites, and I identify more with the whales than the people.

The waves, as I sit here on the lanai writing as the artist I am, are a shade of Prussian blue with streaks of cerulean that lasts most of the morning, then becoming different depending on the afternoon weather of course. When they roll into shore you see that coke bottle green under the white froth of the curl. It is constantly entertaining; a whole day can slip away watching the waves as the day unfolds.

All the water that has ever been is still here and there will be no more. The water that flowed when earth’s time first began is here, the water that enabled life. We drink it now. The tears of Ceasar, the water that bathed Michelangelo, the liquid that quenched the thirst of many a tired traveler across mountain and prairie, the water that sailed ships and cleansed uncountable wounds. The story of mankind is in the water.wavesmuirbeachsurfsurf

In the mindless afternoon of ocean gazing such thoughts come to mind.
In a wave’s length.